


terracotta streets

by yenside



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: body horror / dysphoria, canon character death (references)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-08 20:20:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yenside/pseuds/yenside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lea dreams. Lea remembers. Lea is not sure of who he is, any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	terracotta streets

He dreams of a night full of stars that dance across the sky.

He dreams of rolling green hills, stretching into the distance. There are people around him and he can feel their smiles, bright as sunlight.

When he looks at their faces they dazzle him, and he cannot see who they are.

-

The thing about Twilight Town was that it did, in fact, have a sunset.

It just wasn't what _other_ worlds would call sunset.

Sunset, as the locals called it, was when the red-orange of the ‘day’ bled into the reddish purple of ‘night’. The sun dipped a little in its stance, but it never really set.

It just settled down after a hard days work, to rest until morning.

Axel had always liked Twilight Town, and Lea felt the same about it.

There was something comforting about a world where you could always see the sun.

He knew it like the back of his hand, long days combing the streets and rooftops, longs hours scrabbling for purchase in a stitched together copy, a cold creation of numbers and false output.

There was a spot on a hill where you could see the train tracks stretching below, the path stretched behind in a way that let you see if anybody was coming - and leave before they saw you.

That was not quite so important, now, but old habits die hard.

A view from higher up, with the town spread below, might be better to see the sunset from.

But the hill was good enough.

-

Lea has a tendency to double-take, still, when he sees mirrors. His face is alien to him - he remembers the first few days, touching his cheeks and feeling like he was missing something.

It feels like walking past his childhood home to see that they’d repainted the door, a blend of familiar and unfamiliar that almost turns his stomach. A sense of wrongness crawling between his ribs.

He can see the echoes of the monster under his skin, the shadows of a boy he had once been. But he is neither of these things.

He still knows the weight of a chakram in his hand, the soft breathlessness of summoning fire, the cold shiver of walking through dark corridors.

He replaces what he is missing. His name goes first, back to what was taken from him and rearranged. He slowly strips himself from the muscle memory of chakram, calluses softening and replaced by new ones, shaped to fit the handle of a blade.

Fire comes when he calls it, coiled like a miniature sun behind his eyes, like smoke spiraling from his lungs.

-

He holds his arms up to shield his eyes from the sun, turns his back. But the light follows, and will not let him go.

It hurts, it’s painful, he wants the light to leave - his eyes sting with tears.

The light softens, and he lowers his arms. The sun is small and warm and golden yellow, smiling at him with eyes like deep water.

He wakes up in his bed and can feel his heart singing.

-

There is a storm in Twilight Town, dark clouds rolling and dipping down to brush the tower tops. Water runs down sun baked streets, and everything is washed in grey.

The sun is gone, hidden behind thick layers of stormclouds.

Lea stands on his hill and feels the weight of clouds pressing on his shoulders. Rains sizzles where it hits his skin, but under his closed eyes his cheeks are wet.

The sun is gone, but it will come back. It has to.

-

The sky is mottled grey. Fogs cloaks the valleys and dew clings to grass like a million crystals, shimmering in the faint light.

But behind the clouds, somewhere, is the sun.

For now, that’s good enough.


End file.
